Preston Gralla

The next time you're at an airport looking for a wireless hot spot, and you see one called "Free Wi-Fi" or a similar name, beware -- you may end up being victimized by the latest hot-spot scam hitting airports across the country. Here's how to protect yourself.

The next time you're at an airport looking for a wireless hot spot, and you see one called "Free Wi-Fi" or a similar name, beware -- you may end up being victimized by the latest hot-spot scam hitting airports across the country.

As shipped, the Windows Vista Firewall offers little outbound protection, and it's not clear how such protection can be configured to protect against spyware, Trojans and bots.

Wi-Fi hot spots in airports, restaurants, cafes and even downtown locations have turned Internet access into an always-on, ubiquitous experience. Unfortunately, that also means always-on, ubiquitous security risks.

Shiny, new Windows Vista beckons, and an upgrade is mighty tempting. But before you take the plunge, be aware you may end up forking out a lot more money than just the cost of an operating system upgrade.

Amazon's recently released Elastic Compute Cloud (which it calls EC2 and is still in beta) for the first time brings to the masses the ability to buy server power in the same way you now buy electricity or water. In essence, you pay 10 cents per virtual server per hour, plus bandwidth costs, and you do with that power whatever you want.

When Intria-HP of Toronto, a joint outsourcing venture between Hewlett-Packard Co. and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce was formed, its executives had a daunting task ahead of them: Transform an IT department that had been a cost centre into a revenue centre selling IT services to banks.

There are many professional services automation (PSA) vendors making many promises. Here's how to cut through the hype and choose the right one.